The foreign-financed armed rebellion and the Western-backed opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been falsely portrayed as a spontaneous uprising of “democracy” activists since violence first broke out more than a year ago. But according to a recent investigation published in the U.K. Guardian, top figures in the “regime-change” coalition — most notably the Syrian National Council (SNC) — have intimate links to the highest ranks of the world elite: the shadowy Bilderberg conference, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Goldman Sachs megabank, billionaire financier George Soros, and, of course, the U.S. government. It is all out in the open, too.

On top of that, the report suggests that much of the war propaganda being used to promote international military intervention and “revolution” is actually slick public-relations gimmicks financed by large tax-exempt foundations and even the governments being asked to intervene. And there is big money behind the spread of the disinformation. Consider the seemingly never-ending reports about “civilian massacres” blamed on the Syrian tyrant — almost always from anonymous “activists” — that continually prove to be exaggerated, fabricated, or even perpetrated by the Western-backed rebels themselves, and then blamed on the regime.

The most recent example occurred just last week when anonymous “activists” prompted the global press and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to claim that over 200 civilians, including women and children, had been massacred, only to be contradicted later — even by a UN investigation and “opposition activists” themselves. What actually happened, as The New Americanoriginally reported even before the UN probe, was apparently a battle between armed Western-backed “rebels” and the dictatorship’s military forces that resulted in some deaths of combatants.

So who are the “opposition activists” in reality? “The mainstream news media have, in the main, been remarkably passive when it comes to Syrian sources: billing them simply as ‘official spokesmen’ or ‘pro-democracy campaigners’ without, for the most part, scrutinizing their statements, their backgrounds or their political connections,” observed Charlie Skelton in his detailed and well-sourced article for the Guardian, noting that many of the most frequently quoted sources are openly connected to what he calls “the Anglo-American opposition creation business.” As The New Americandocumented a year ago, many of the Syrian “opposition” groups and leaders were being showered with American taxpayer dollars to undermine the regime long before the “Arab Spring” even erupted.

Aside from the “anonymous” sources, there are a few opposition players that seem to be doing virtually all of the accusing for the establishment press — not to mention making most of the demands for more “humanitarian” war. The first one cited by Skelton is Bassma Kodmani, one of the top leaders in the “Syrian National Council” — a foreign-based umbrella group for some opposition factions, including the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, which is widely touted by the establishment press and Western governments as the primary group representing the “people” of Syria. And Kodmani, who continues to loudly demand international military intervention to oust the Assad regime, has open links to the elite.

Consider, for example, that she was at this year’s Bilderberg conference in Chantilly, Virginia — a secret yearly meeting of the top global power brokers from media, finance, government, military, intelligence, business, and more, that has come under criticism from across the political spectrum. Kodmani was also at the 2008 Bilderberg conference, though she was listed as French then. Now, for reasons that are not entirely clear, her official affiliation is listed only as “international.”

Before Bilderberg, Kodmani was a former official with the massive Ford Foundation, an organization that has also come under fire for its controversial efforts to remake the world. More recently, she was serving as the executive director of the “Arab Reform Initiative” for the powerful U.S.-based globalist outfit known as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) — yet another controversial elite group that is often faced with severe criticism for its hostility to national sovereignty, as well as American traditions of self-governance and individual liberty. The CFR membership roster includes many of the most influential figures in U.S. politics, business, military, and more.

“At this level, the worlds of banking, diplomacy, industry, intelligence, and the various policy institutes and foundations all mesh together, and there, in the middle of it all, is Kodmani,” Skelton pointed out, noting that billionaire leftist financier George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Goldman Sachs International Chairman Peter Sutherland, as well as countless military and intelligence bosses from the West, were all tied to the “Arab Reform Initiative” in various ways. “A picture is emerging of Kodmani as a trusted lieutenant of the Anglo-American democracy-promotion industry.” Indeed.

Another senior representative of the SNC is Ausama (or Osama) Monajed, the founder and director of Barada Television. The “opposition” TV outfit, U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks showed, was actually being secretly financed with millions of American taxpayers’ dollars, starting under the George W. Bush administration. The Syrian regime “would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change,” noted the top U.S. diplomat in Damascus in a 2009 embassy cable. “A reassessment of current U.S.-sponsored programming that supports anti-[government] factions, both inside and outside Syria, may prove productive.”

State Department spokesmen later claimed that unconstitutionally showering U.S. taxpayer money on foreign propaganda aimed at fomenting revolution in Syria was not “necessarily” undermining the existing government. Of course, more recently, the U.S. government and assorted Arab dictatorships have been funneling arms and equipment to the rebels, too. Even more aid is expected soon.

Another senior figure demanding an international war on Syria is Radwan Ziadeh, a “senior fellow” at the taxpayer-funded, establishment-linked “U.S. Institute of Peace,” and a “visiting fellow” at the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs — the CFR’s counterpart in the U.K. Also doing much of the talking — including demands that American troops be unconstitutionally deployed to participate in Syria’s civil war — are Hamza Fakher and Michael Weiss, both darlings of the neoconservative, war-mongering establishment. The two are also deeply involved in marketing the proposed military intervention using PR trickery, evidence suggests.

Commenting on the “amazingly open ties of the Syrian opposition to their Western paymasters,” analyst Daniel McAdams offered a brief summary of the links in a piece for the liberty-minded site LewRockwell.com entitled “Syrian Opposition’s Amazing CIA Credentials.” His conclusion: “Down to the person these Syrian engines of regime change are products of the US empire and its interventionist, Trotskyite foreign policy of ‘global democratic revolution.’” More than a few observers have echoed those sentiments, especially in recent months, as the true agenda became even more transparent.

Meanwhile, one of the primary sources of alleged atrocities in Syria being perpetrated by the Assad regime is known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a British-based outfit that seems to consist of just one man who passionately despises the Syrian dictatorship. Establishment media outlets around the world have written countless stories based just on this one entity — almost always presenting it as an unbiased observer merely reporting the facts on the ground. But what is the SOHR really?

“One would believe this to be a giant sprawling organization with hundreds of members working hard on the ground, documenting evidence in Syria with photographs and video, while coordinating with foreign press to transparently and objectively ‘observe’ the ‘human rights’ conditions in Syria, as well as demonstrate their methodologies. Surely that is the impression the Western media attempts to relay to its readers,” noted analyst Tony Cartalucci, who has been following the Syrian conflict in detail.

“However, astoundingly, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is none of these things,” he pointed out, citing a Reuters report about the SOHR and the activist behind it. “Instead, it is merely a single man, sitting behind a computer in a British apartment, who alleges he receives ‘phone calls’ with information always incriminating the Syrian government, and ever glorifying the ‘Free Syrian Army.’”

The press, of course, has come under heavy fire for its shoddy reporting and misleading use of supposed sources. “Syria: major media outlets shaming themselves over Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” noted a recent headline in the respected Modern Tokyo Times in an article exposing the SOHR “so-called entity” and the deceptive reporting in the West that relies so heavily on it. The use of biased “anonymous sources” has also attracted scrutiny.

Some of the most high-profile “democracy activists” on the ground in Syria, for instance, have been caught staging events like massacres and killings in videos posted on YouTube. Sometimes the phony scenes have even been broadcasted by establishment media outlets such as CNN and the Qatari regime’s Al Jazeera. In several recent cases, slaughters blamed on the Assad regime — and widely touted as such by the international media — were later shown to have likely been committed by armed opposition groups.

There are also numerous other factions, including al-Qaeda, battling the regime in Syria right now. So despite the carefully constructed media-created perception of an opposition unified behind the Western establishment-backed SNC for “democracy,” there are actually numerous armed revolutionaries who are at odds with each other. Those divisions will eventually explode if and when Assad is finally ousted.

What the facts show, however, is that there is another, more sinister agenda to the war propaganda, the foreign backing of often-times brutal “rebels,” and the incessant calls for international military intervention to install a new regime in Syria. Amid all of the deception, it has become clear that there is much more going on than Western powers and the establishment media are admitting. And stuck in the crossfire between the establishment-backed rebels, Islamist terrorists, and the dictator’s armed forces, thousands of innocent civilians are being slaughtered.